Ranking of companies from the Netherlands 2016, by number of employees

In 2016, Ahold Delhaize employed roughly 375,000 people worldwide, making it the largest company from the Netherlands that year. Runner-up Unilever employed less than half that amount, at just under 170,000 people. The number of employees working for Ahold Delhaize increased significantly in the last number of years. In 2010, the multinational counted just under 140,000 employees, meaning its employee numbers had more than doubled in just six years. Unilever, on the other hand, saw its worldwide number of employees decrease significantly in the last 15 years.

 Shell has the highest turnover 

  When it came to turnover, Ahold Delhaize was only the third largest company in the Netherlands. Leading the ranking of the companies with the highest turnover was Shell, with a turnover of roughly 282 billion euros in 2017. By comparison, Ahold’s turnover that year amounted to just under 63 billion euros. Unilever, the company with the second largest number of employees, had a turnover of roughly 54 billion euros.

Largest family-owned and state-owned companies

   The turnover of the largest Dutch family-owned enterprise, Heineken, was roughly 13 times smaller than that of Shell, at just under 21 billion euros in 2015. The largest state-owned company that year was Gasterra, a company trading and supplying natural gas. In 2015, Gasterra had a turnover of nearly 15 billion euros.